Chapter 18: Marketing Yourself: What Makes You Unique

He who has a thing to sell
And goes and whispers in a well
Is not so apt to get the dollars
As he who climbs a tree and hollers

—Anonymous

What Is Marketing?

I read that little poem on the back of a sugar packet in a restaurant. It struck me as the perfect definition of marketing—the only way to get someone to buy your product (or your service, idea, or you, yourself) is to get out and holler. The greatest idea in the world is of no use at all if no one knows about it.

Simply put, marketing is the process of getting a product or service from a seller to a buyer. If you're looking for a new job, you're the seller and the prospective employer is the buyer. If you have a small home business, you're selling a product or service to potential customers. If you're trying to raise funds for a worthy cause, you can't do it unless people hear about your efforts. Marketing is the strategy you apply in order to sell your idea, concept, service, or product to a group of targeted customers.

There are two major foundations for marketing yourself effectively. The first is to know yourself; to really look inside yourself and understand everything you can do, what you're capable of, what your skills are, what your knowledge is, what you want to do, what you're striving for in your life. It's common sense—the more you know about yourself, the better you can market yourself.

The second aspect of marketing is to know your environment: Who are your potential customers? What do you know about these people? What do they need; what do they want? The answers to these questions will tell you what's most valuable to these people, what they would pay money for, and how you can best serve them.

The more you know about the customer, the better. You never know when a small fact might lead to a better product.

—R. Stephen Fountaine,
VP of Market Research, Kimberly-Clark Corp.